Epiphanies
by Tekli
Summary: She's not entirely sure if she's following him or if he's following her, but she knows she has fallen in love. [a LloydxColette oneshot]


**Title: **Epiphanies  
**Author: **Tekli  
**Rating: **K+  
**Genre: **Romance/Spiritual (it's hard to describe)  
**Spoilers: **For Colette's angel transformation.  
**Warnings: **None, really. Depth is given to Colette (whom I love dearly) that might not seem obvious in the game.  
**Disclaimer: **I do not own Tales of Symphonia, nor do I claim to. I am not making any money off of this.

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She watches him at night.

It starts as a way to pass so many sleepless hours. She volunteers for guard duty whenever possible, but she is their salvation and salvation needs her beauty rest. She decides that it would be more troublesome for them to know her secret than to lose a night of sleep. Besides, Kratos always volunteers and she knows he isn't what he says; she isn't quite sure what, but he is not natural and makes her nervous in the most comfortable of ways.

She always convinces them that she is asleep. She has years of insomnia-induced practice; feigning sleep until her father snores and she can read or draw or think or perhaps listen to the stars. She knows she would make a good actress, but hates the attention and would much rather make her companions believe in simple things, that she's asleep, that she's just not hungry right now, that she feels the chilly air and that everything is just peachy. It's nice, making them believe.

On nights she is sleeping, she listens to his every move and constructs pictures in her mind. She hears the wind through his hair and each strand rustles against its neighbor. There is a faint whistle and he is breathing. When she sees faintly through her eyelashes she amplifies her mind's eye with reality.

She's not entirely sure if she's following him or if he's following her, but she's sure it doesn't matter because they're all just pawns—_she's always been good at chess, but she doesn't play often and always brands her victories as beginner's luck. The trounced Genis doesn't entirely accept this explanation, but it's easier to say than that it's not in the thinking but the knowing_—and she knows she has fallen in love. She is entranced by cocoa eyes and impassioned visions of better futures, by pretty words he wraps things in, and by how she has to act best around him but even then he knows sometimes.

On the rare nights she has guard duty, she watches him very closely to make sure he doesn't do anything. She kneels by his head and looks down reverently, studying the contours of his face. His forehead is smooth, unwrinkled, like a normal teenage boy, and she is unsure of why she would expect anything different. His eyebrows are dark and expressive even in sleep, quirking with dreams and her nearness. She leans down close enough that on his eyelids she can see the imprint of his iris and each individual stroke making up the perfectly ink lines that are his eyelashes. His nose is small, perhaps even a bit upturned. His cheeks still bear hints of baby fat and she prays that he will never grow so much as to lose it. There's the faintest hint of color around his lips that she hopes he will shave when mature, because though she loves his incredible power, she does not plan on kissing a caveman—_she doesn't really plan on kissing anyone, though, because she can't feel anything, not even herself, much less Lloyd, and she's going to die, and that tends to put a damper on a relationship._

She ghosts her hands over the rest of his body. The arches of his feet are ticklish; this she knows from experience. His heels and toes are thickly callused and feel almost as little as she does, so she presses the pads of her fingers against them and thinks veryvery hard about heat and almost convinces herself she's real. There is the scar above his left ankle, and there is his birth mark. The backs of his knees are sensitive, which she does not know, but knows. She meanders up his thighs and wishes she could feel if only to know what, exactly, to fantasize about. She sees his muscle and tries to work that into her half-baked fantasy, but soon gives up. His arms she has touched, and he has hugged her. She settles for chaste fantasies contentedly.

He is her muse, and three in the morning finds her writing sonnets and haiku and couplets and free verse. Sometimes she puts them to music, classical or religious or childhood ditties that have just as much dignity. She doesn't make up her own melodies, because she is not much of a musician, but then she wonders why she writes poetry, since she is not much of a poet. She asks herself why she is saving the world, since she isn't much of a Chosen. Then she decides not to think.

She talks to him silently. She can not find a word for it: dialogue, internal monologue, soliloquy. She settles for internal dialogue even though it makes her sound insane. Divine epiphanies?

Fear not. I am the angel who needs neither food nor sleep, and have been sent as savior to this world. I have watched you many nights, and when I leave, I shall watch you ever more. I would very much like to be your guardian angel, and if I am not already, I shall ask permission of heaven and perhaps they will bend the rules for me.

* * *

**Author's Notes:  
"Then she decides not to think": **I really like this paragraph. Not that you care, but, well.  
**Colette's personality: **People rarelyseem to appreciate Colette. This saddens me. She is not as simple as she might come off as being, and I try to show this. I might be biased in this decision--I act rather like Colette at times, and I like to think I'm less simple than I appear--but Istill think it's perfectly valid.I think she's a very intelligent and intuitive person, really.  
**Inspiration: **Kittu9's Full Metal Alchemist fanfic, I believe. Especially 'Love Like Salt' and 'Radiance.' FMA fanfic seems to be inspiring me to write ToS, probably because I am most comfortable with these characters.  
**Title: **From my little brother's vocab list. He went on and on about this word, and still somehow managed to get it wrong on the test. (He even used the mnemonic that he was an epiphany to help him remember it.) Look the word up for all of the definitions, if you so desire. They all work, in their own little ways.

Thank you very much for reading this! Constructive criticism is appreciated, but then again, so is mindless praise. (Not that my ego needs it...)


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